This eloquent anthology, carefully stitched together by veteran Richard Epstein, contains poetry, prose, and songs written by 21 Memorial Day Writers' Project participants, and spans 1993 – 2011, a period in United States history that began in peacetime and has stretched into the longest war fought since Viet Nam. This sampling will make your heart bleed, but your soul will smile.

This isn’t just a book about fishing, although that is the thread that stitches everything together. The span is broad, and the book reflects what we see but sometimes fail to recognize. The changing of the seasons; the constant battle for survival – both animal and human; the varied characters and personalities we encounter in our lives who inevitably mould us into who we eventually become...

On April 27, 2011 sixty two tornadoes touched down in Alabama, seven of those in Limestone County alone. This is Jennifer Adair's story of survival from one of those seven tornadoes, a deadly EF5 that left a 132 mile path of destruction across Northern Alabama and Southern Tennessee.

Alien possession meets alternate history, in this communist tale set in 1923 Russia, about a boy named Abraham (Abe), whose parents suddenly disappear one day. Like many of the adults throughout Russia, they are being taken away in the night by a special police force put together by Lenin’s “new” government, a government put together after the arrival of spacecrafts with biomechanoid origins.

It’s not every day that a 1920’s flying ace risks his life to bring a plane down safely for a little girl. But when a horribly disfigured Sal and Lillian land in the remote, snowy mountains of Montana, a friendship will occur, a bond like no other. As the winds blow and the snow accumulates, the pilot will do everything in his power to get this child down harsh ravines and rocky slopes.

Sixteen-year-old Tami has wanted nothing more than to spend a night camping out on an island. When her parents finally agree to let her do this, she is ecstatic. On the way to the island, the ship crashes, leaving Tami as the sole survivor. She takes refuge on an uninhabited island, but her future is uncertain. Will she be able to survive until she is rescued?

The end of the world? That’s the stuff of Hollywood blockbusters and deep philosophical exercises in school. No need to sweat it. So when sixteen-year-old Tess’s doomsday-dad builds a bomb shelter in their suburban backyard, everyone thinks he’s gone crazy… until fire rains down from the sky, sinking whole cities into colossal craters and setting much of the world ablaze. [YA Apocalyptic]

In a span of mere hours, the entire adult population is decimated, leaving their children behind to fend for themselves and deal with the horrific aftermath. Shane and his friends are not the unlucky survivors left to inherit this new, messed-up planet. No, they are its next victims. There is an unknown power lurking, and it won’t stop until every person in the world is dead.

A collection of four Stella Madison Capers, including: Sea Trials, The Pushover Plot, Lost in the Wilderness, and The Last Resort. Also includes a brief account of Lilly Maytree's true-life voyage along the same route, in the sailboat Glory B.

Isolates and Survivors began as a collection of stories about hardy, tenacious people and how they overcome their grueling circumstances. In this collection people endure mental instability, find everything they know to be true is wrong, and yet still reach out tenderly, even though the world hands them stones on their cracked plate.